All posts tagged Commuting

PATH train riders at the World Trade Center station on Tuesday morning.

Mike Amon/The Wall Street Journal

PATH train service from Midtown to Jersey City and Hoboken is suspended through Tuesday evening’s rush hour, extending a closure that began on Sunday afternoon after a fire in Manhattan, according to Port Authority of New York and New Jersey officials.

Service was also shut down to Midtown on Sunday evening and Monday and Tuesday mornings, forcing riders to take trains from the World Trade Center PATH station to Jersey City. Officials didn’t release a time frame for when full service would return for the system’s more than 250,000 daily riders.

The fire, which a Port Authority spokesman said occurred near the 9th Street PATH stop, shut down service between New Jersey and the PATH’s 33rd Street station but service was restored by Monday’s rush hour. On Tuesday morning, officials said, a smoky condition had returned in the same area as the fire. A preliminary review found that a repair splice between an old cable and a replacement cable was the cause, officials said. Read More »

The LIRR carries about 301,000 people each weekday. The MTA has said if there is a strike on Sunday, the bus shuttle service, park and ride locations, and ferry service backup plans won’t be able to accommodate everyone. Read More »

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority took a step towards providing bus service for Long Island Rail Road commuters should the train line’s unions go on strike this summer.

The agency’s board voted 8-4 Wednesday in favor of starting the process to request proposals from outside vendors to operate weekday bus service if negotiations break down. The first day the LIRR unions can go on strike is July 19.

Thomas Prendergast, the MTA’s chairman and chief executive, said the agency needed to solicit proposals as a “a strike contingency plan” that could involve hundreds of buses. The agency held off doing so earlier as a way to “keep tempers down and keep negotiations continuing,” he said. Read More »

A Netro-North car on the New Haven line on May 21, 2013, after a train derailed a week before.

It could take weeks to restore the broken power equipment that snarled Metro-North’s New Haven line Wednesday morning, according to Con Edison, potentially throwing off travel routines for tens of thousands of commuters into New York City from Westchester and Connecticut.

In a written statement, a spokesman for the utility said it could take two to three weeks to repair the 138 kilovolt feeder cable that failed just after 5:20 a.m. The cable brings high voltage power from the Con Ed grid to the railroad’s overhead catenary wires, which power both Metro-North and Amtrak trains through the New Haven line corridor.

A second feeder cable was already out of service for repairs when the failure occurred, according to Con Ed and Metro-North. The railroad was performing upgrades to the power supply in that stretch of track, a spokeswoman said. Without the second feeder cable, Metro-North and Amtrak have resorted to diesel-powered trains running on the hour between Stamford, Conn. and Grand Central Terminal, severely limiting capacity for riders. Read More »

The Long Island Rail Road cancelled or diverted 15 trains headed into Manhattan during the Monday morning rush hour after an equipment failure in one of the four tunnels under the East River.

The backup was caused by a problem with the third rail in one of the tunnels, LIRR officials said.

An Amtrak spokesman said problems were first reported at 7:15 a.m. when an LIRR train was disabled in the tunnel. An Amtrak rescue engine pulled the disabled train out, and crews are now making repairs in hopes of having the tunnel in operation before the afternoon rush hour, he said. Read More »

A 39-year-old woman was stabbed twice on a New York City subway Monday morning and another woman was punched in the face by a homeless woman who appeared to emotionally disturbed, a law-enforcement official said.

The two victims were listed in stable condition at New York-Presbyterian/Weill-Cornell Medical Center following the attack on an uptown 6 train as it was approaching the Lexington Avenue-59th Street Station, the official said.

The suspect, Ashley Jacob, 31 years old, was taken into custody and transported to the psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital for evaluation, the official said. Charges against Ms. Jacob were pending. Read More »

The New York program bears the name Citi Bike, in homage to the corporate sponsor, Citigroup, that has provided most of its startup funding. And like several of the cities that have preceded New York into bike-sharing – including Washington, London and Boston – this city will use its own customized version of the model pioneered in Montreal. Read More »

A departure board at Manhattan’s Penn Station on Friday lists canceled Amtrak trains to Boston.

By Ted Mann and Jackie Bischof

UPDATED | Amtrak on Friday shut down all service between New York and Boston, a measure taken at the request of law-enforcement authorities leading the manhunt for the surviving suspect in the bomb attacks on the Boston Marathon.

Train service was suspended at noon Friday and will not resume until the railroad receives an all-clear from police officials in Boston, an Amtrak spokesman said.

The decision halted traffic on Amtrak’s heavily traveled inter-city northeast corridor and potentially disrupted plans for thousands at New York City’s Penn Station. The Metro-North commuter line, which serves the city’s northern suburbs, continued to operate normally on Friday. Read More »

An injured passenger from the Seastreak Wall Street is taken to an ambulance on Jan. 9.

The captain of the high-speed ferry that crashed into a pier in Lower Manhattan earlier this month told investigators he didn’t have time to warn passengers or sound an alarm when the controls of the boat failed.

Capt. Jason Reimer told a team from the National Transportation Safety Board that the failure of controls on the vessel’s bridge happened too quickly, according to a preliminary summary of the investigation released Friday.

The vessel, Seastreak Wall Street, was moving at about 12 knots when it slammed into slip D on the south side of Pier 11, injuring scores of passengers. Read More »